' Christmas has always been about books'
Archie Macpherson Guest Blog
Christmas has always been about books.
Giving and receiving.
I recall the Christmas morning I first set eyes on Treasure Island. I think by New Year’s Day I had read it a dozen times and I believe I can still see the very print of the pages clinging to my retina. It said a lot of my parents that they had judged I was the kind of boy who would lap up that adventure story, given that they noticed how often I was hunched over it in a corner of our not-very-spacious home.
I would drop hints of what I would like to come my way in future. For instance, I spent so much time in Shettleston Public Library, where I believed my reading did more for me there than school, that they would send out search parties for me.
It was there I came across a book which was curiously, but charmingly illustrated, with stick-like figures that a Primary 5 kid might have drawn. Some of them were actually drawn by the author himself – a man who by stark contrast had been embroiled in the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917 in Russia. They were about middle-class children holidaying in the Lake District in England.
Thus began my obsession with Arthur Ransome’s series of books starting with Swallows and Amazons. I suppose that my east-end of Glasgow environment made me envious of kids in a hugely different world in which I had to compare my rusty bike with their sailing boats. Ransome died one week after Celtic won the European Cup in 1967. Some would turn up at Christmas to such effect that I read every single word of his entire series.
As I matured, I found I wanted to gift others books at Christmas, that I liked (whether they cared for them or not). Although the silence of my sister after I had sent her James Joyce’s ‘Ulysses’ spoke eloquently of her reaction.
This Christmas I am sending my grandchildren my own book, whether they like it or not, along with a Mick Herron book – a writer of spy novels, but the funniest writer in Christendom!
- Archie Macpherson